Monday, April 19, 2010

Mobile Clinics and Home Visits

(Photos: top is Dr. Jessica Dailey seeing patients at the mobile clinic, outdoors. Middle is Dr. Dailey at the mobile clinic inside the church. Bottom is me seeing a patient on a home visit in the Terrain Acra camp.)

In addition to offering medical services six days a week at the clinic, the Haitian doctors and American volunteer doctors also conduct mobile clinics and home visits.

The mobile clinic is conducted in the nearby Delmas neighborhood church. Volunteer Drs. Jessica Dailey and Mike Rhodes see patients there two afternoons per week. They treat approximately 20-25 patients there each afternoon. The patient load is slowly increasing as patients learn about the clinic.

We are hoping to be able to establish a full service clinic there over time. The overall goal is to slowly increase our work in the surrounding neighborhood, especially as patients move out of the camp and back into their homes/neighborhoods. The church space offers stability to the clinic and privacy for the patients. It is especially helpful for those who are not living in the Terrain Acra camp itself.

We also do homevisits two afternoons each week. They are geared toward serving those living in the camp who are unable to come from their shelter to the camp clinic. Currently, I make home visits on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with a clinic nurse and interpreter.

One patient’s shelter is on a steep hill and he has his leg in a cast following surgery for injuries sustained during the earthquake. Another patient is bed bound from a spinal cord injury in 1993. He moved to the camp with his family after their residence was destroyed in the earthquake. We also visit a family with two young children, all of whom are being treated for tuberculosis.